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Updated: May 18, 2025
They put Krochmal outside of the pale of Judaism, together with all scholars occupied with Bible criticism, among them Geiger, who had exerted great influence upon the school of reformers writing in Hebrew. In Lithuania things did not go so far. The hard conditions of existence there were not propitious to the rise of a purely scholarly school or to theoretic discussion.
His studies were purely Rabbinic, but his alert mind grasped every opportunity of acquiring other knowledge, and in this incidental way he became familiar first with French and then with German. The influence of the philosopher Krochmal, with whom he came in close personal contact, shaped his career as a writer and a scholar.
In giving a connected sketch of Ibn Ezra's philosophical ideas, the most one can do is to collect all the sayings bearing upon our subject which are found scattered through Ibn Ezra's writings, and classify them and combine them into a connected whole. This has been done before by Nahman Krochmal and by David Rosin, and we shall follow the latter in our exposition here. God is the One.
A philosopher was needed, one who should solve the problem of the existence of the Jewish people and its proper sphere from the vantage- ground of authoritative knowledge. Such a philosopher arose in Galicia itself. Krochmal led the sad life of the Polish-Jewish scholar void of pleasures and filled to overflowing with privation and suffering. His whole time was consecrated to Jewish science.
The boldest of the contributors to He-Haluz, not counting its valiant editor, was Abraham Krochmal, the son of the philosopher. A scholar and subtle thinker, he introduced Biblical criticism into Hebrew literature. Even the most moderate among the orthodox could not remain tranquil in the presence of such blasphemous views.
At bottom both do but interpret the ancient notion of the Divine selection of Israel and of a "chosen people". But while Krochmal regards religion as a fleeting phase in the existence of the nation, for Luzzatto religion is an essential element in Judaism, a view not unlike Bossuet's. However, it does not lead him astray. He still tries to harmonize faith with the demands of the modern spirit.
Several years later, in 1839, the volume finally came out, clothed in the form of a reply to inquiries addressed to the author by a high Russian official. From the point of view of Jewish learning, Bet Yehudah can claim but scanty merits. It lacks that depth of philosophic-historic insight which distinguishes so brilliantly the "Guide of the Perplexed of Our Time" of the Galician thinker Krochmal.
It could not become a popular movement. Neither the depth of thinkers like Rapoport and Krochmal, nor the biting satire of an Erter, nor the Zionistic lyricism of a Letteris, had force enough to cry a halt to the Hasidim and impede their dark work. In point of fact, the newer ideas all but failed to make an impression on the most independent of the young Rabbis.
The Rabbi Solomon Jehudah Rapoport, one of the founders of the Science of Judaism, the pursuit that was to replace Rabbinic scholasticism, and the philosopher Nahman Krochmal, the promoter of the idea of the "mission of the Jewish people", a substitute for the mystic, religious ideal they were the two who transformed the literary movement inaugurated in Germany into a permanent influence.
Krochmal though he does not say it explicitly sees in religion only a passing phenomenon in the history of the Jewish people, exactly as its political existence was but a temporary phase. The Jewish people presents a double aspect to the observer. It is national in its particularism, or its concrete aspect, and universal in its spiritualism.
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